Where is my tuxedo? A hundred miles away. Because of course it is.
The view ain’t bad, though.
In which lots to do today
I have guest posts set up for the next several days (and if you’ve sent me something but haven’t heard back yet, don’t worry, you’re in) but per my usual MO it’s extremely unlikely that I won’t find time to put some posts up while I’m running my brother’s wedding. At least some pictures. I’ve had a pretty full day already; I had a job interview this morning that I think/hope went quite well, and ran three or four other errands before coming back home and letting my wife run out to take care of the several errands she needs to do. Then packing and putting final touches on my speech and putting together the “final” version of the booklet I’ll be using to make sure I don’t call the bride by the wrong name or anything like that during the ceremony.
(Seriously. I’ve been having literal, no-bullshit nightmares about calling the bride by the wrong name. I may actually buy a gun today so that when that happens I can simply shoot myself on the spot before anyone else realizes what I’ve just said.)
I’ve also got fifty pages or so of beta reading/commenting to do for another author’s WIP that I am bound and determined to get off my plate before I leave. Oh, and my son finished preschool yesterday, so I’m dealing with lots of weird Dad moments where holy hell how is my kid old enough that he finished his first year of school. He’s actually repeating this year of preschool because he’s the youngest in his class (there are kids a year and a half older than him in there– even being held back a year, he won’t be the oldest next year) so I will not have a kindergartner next year, but it’s still weird to think he’s finished a year of Real School.
And it would probably be good if I could convince myself what day it is. As it worked out, my interview this morning was scheduled precisely when the place opened, so when I arrived fifteen minutes early it meant I had to cool my jets in the parking lot for a bit. I checked the posted hours and I swear to God it took a good two minutes to reconstruct what day it was. The boy being home isn’t helping; I’m convinced it’s a weekend.
So. Yeah. I should probably at least have some of my around-the-house stuff done by the time my wife gets home from her errands. I can check off blog post, I guess. Be nice to each other, y’all.
#WeekendCoffeeShare: Insane Idiosyncrasies Edition
If we were having coffee, I’d be in a better mood than I am right now, because I’m not drinking coffee. (Note that it is probably best to interpret this post less as whining and more as look what an idiot I am. Calibrate your expectations accordingly.)
Our coffee maker took a shit a couple of weeks ago, developing a leak toward the base somewhere that necessitated its immediate replacement. The new hotness was a more expensive & more technologically complicated edition. It had a timer on it! My wife was super happy, as you could set everything up before bed and have hot coffee already brewed when you get out of the shower in the morning.
Sounds great, right? It also has an auto shutoff, meaning that there’s no more early-afternoon trips that feature one of us saying Did you shut the coffee maker off? because it automatically shuts itself off after some predetermined amount of time. And for whatever reason I haven’t taken the time to figure out how the timer works and how it can be adjusted, which means that there have been several times since we got the new coffee maker where I’ve wanted coffee and not had any, because for some reason the idea of reheated coffee creeps me out. Once that shit gets cold, it’s permanently undrinkable.
Note that I drink iced coffee every now and again. If it’s cold on purpose, that’s fine. If it’s cold because it got cold, it cannot be made hot again.
Yes. I know.
That doesn’t make any sense at all. I am aware of the problem and I have top people working on it.
I just wandered into the kitchen– yes, I know, it’s a quarter to twelve, shut up— ready for a hot cup of coffee only to be greeted with what was best lukewarm liquid that wouldn’t have been hot at all once I added milk to it. Turning the pot back on or putting the cup in the microwave is existentially impossible, and making a new pot seems wasteful. So no coffee for me this morning, again, because I’m too damn dumb/lazy to figure out how to extend that auto shutoff feature by another hour or two or, better, just disable it altogether.
I am not very bright, is what I’m saying here. On the plus side, I discovered cold pizza in the fridge that I didn’t know was there, so the morning isn’t a complete loss.
How’re you?
Anybody wanna do a guest post?
Short notice, I know, but: I’m out of town for my brother’s wedding Thursday through Sunday of next week. If anybody has anything laying around (or stuck in their brains) that could make a good guest post, either hit me up in comments or drop me an email.
In which I approve of motherhood
Big thumbs up to all the moms out there. Please continue to, as they say, do you. Or not, if you’d prefer otherwise.
My brother and his fiancee are in town for the holiday, and we got together yesterday to go over details for the ceremony, which I’m officiating– totally a bucket list item checked off there. I am currently on my fourth draft of the benediction, and by “fourth draft” I mean I have written three entirely different speeches and rejected all of them, including one that was nearly entirely references to movies and TV shows and songs that I mostly wrote to get it out of my system. My own proclivities as a writer are sort of working against me here; I do sincerity best when seasoned with anger and outrage, and… well, that’s not entirely appropriate to standing in front of a roomful of a couple hundred friends and family and the occasional random stranger and marrying my brother off. I need to do genuine sincerity here, and sincerity about life and love and a whole lot of other things that my Midwestern sensibilities make me occasionally reticent about speaking of in front of other people, and I need to do it without using the word “bullshit” or saying “labia” even once because that will scandalize people and apparently the officiant at a wedding isn’t supposed to do that.
There were meow jokes in one of the drafts. This is the level I’ve descended to. You can see there is still some work to be done.
Maybe one meow.
On the other hand, I managed to work a Princess Bride reference into the ceremony itself, so I probably ought not to press my luck any further.
Now turn the computer off and go hug your mom. Or the nearest available mom surrogate.
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